Blogs & News

: Online Event: Women Writers – An International Conversation

Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Carr and L.M. Montgomery were women writers whose work and art reflected their time and sense of place. So how did they engage with the wider world? What were the international influences on their writing? How did cross-Atlantic themes impact their writing and do they still speak to us today? To mark International Women’s Day, we’re looking at four cherished women writers, Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell from the UK and L.M. Montgomery

: Online Event: Villette V Ruth: Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell

Charlotte Brontë is a giant of Victorian literature and the much-loved author of the classic Jane Eyre, but what of her last novel to be published during her lifetime, Villette, about the passion and pain of unrequited love? Brontë’s semi-autobiographical book Villette tells the story of Lucy Snowe as she flees England for a Belgian boarding school. Her tale of heartache and adversity contrasts with that of Ruth, a novel about an unmarried mother written by Charlotte’s friend

: International Women’s Day Banner Making

Celebrate International Women's Day 2024 and champion the achievements of women by joining our drop-in banner making workshop with renowned textile artist Dr. Sarah-Joy Ford. In this international women’s day special workshop you will be invited to make your own feminist textile banner inspired by the Elizabeth Gaskell’s feminist legacy in Manchester. We will be using heat bond applique, hand stitching and embellishment techniques and tassel making. All the materials will be provided and you will be able

: Online Talk: Charles Darwin – Literary Science in Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell’s final novel Wives and Daughters explores the Victorian interest in science and logic through the character of Roger Hamley and the gentleman scientist Lord Hollingford. Roger was heavily based on the famous evolutionary scientist, and author of The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin. Wives and Daughters was Darwin’s favourite novel and he had it re-read to him on his deathbed. Discover how Elizabeth’s knowledge of the public debates around science influenced her storytelling in her

: Online Course: Reading Childhood – Jane Eyre

What do you think of when you imagine Victorian children? Demure little things who are seen and not heard? This is certainly not true of the child characters of the great Victorian novelists. In Jane Eyre and David Copperfield, Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens show us how trauma can influence character development as well as spelling out the responsibilities adults have towards children. George Eliot and our own Elizabeth Gaskell give us rounded, observant and intelligent young girls in Maggie Tulliver